National Cup 2026-2027: Four V-League Defeats and a Sigh Named Survival

Over two weekend days, eight qualifying matches of the 2026-2027 National Cup closed with a statistic that forces a pause: four clubs currently playing in the V-League fell one after another to first-division sides, and three of those four defeats came on home soil. This is no longer a single shock; it is a pattern that has taken shape. Apart from Bac Ninh beating first-division Long An 3-2 away, the other four V-League representatives returned empty-handed. Thanh Hoa lost 0-2 at home to Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, a club just relegated to the first division and now a promotion candidate. Hoang Anh Gia Lai lost 2-3 to Hung Yen at Quy Nhon, the mountain club's temporary home ground, because Pleiku is being renovated due to poor drainage during heavy rain. Hai Phong lost 0-1 to Thep Can Tho, a side that has just moved its registration from Quang Ninh to the western capital and had lost its first-division opener. Hong Linh Ha Tinh fell to hosts Phu Tho 2-3 on penalties after a 0-0 draw in 90 minutes. To anyone who reads the table before reading the match, this run of results looks absurd. But placed beside each club's finances, squad depth and objectives, it becomes chillingly logical. The National Cup, for many V-League clubs, especially those without title ambitions, has never been the main stage. The deeper you go, the more travel and accommodation cost, the more squad worries pile up, while survival in the V-League matters far more. So V-League sides approach the National Cup with half a heart, opening the door for hungrier, more determined first-division teams to cause surprises. Thanh Hoa's story is the clearest example. The club from the Thanh region only knew it still existed right before the 2026-2027 V-League kicked off, with a limited squad because there was little money to retain key players or sign new ones. Before facing Becamex Ho Chi Minh City, they confronted a fresh financial worry: FIFA ordered the club to pay more than 305,000 USD, roughly 8 billion dong, to Rimario Gordon after the Jamaican striker filed a complaint. If the matter is not resolved within 45 days of receiving the document on September 16, Thanh Hoa will be banned from registering new players for three transfer windows. The irony is that the case arose under the previous sponsorship regime, while the club has since been handed to a new sponsor. This is where so-called top-level football reveals its thin shell. A V-League club threatened by an old debt over its transfer future choosing to let a National Cup match slip is not cowardice, it is accounting. The transfer market is a match without a referee, where every number is a free kick. And Thanh Hoa stands before a free kick without knowing who will take it. Hoang Anh Gia Lai also faces a season full of difficulty in the survival race after two straight defeats to open the 2026-2027 V-League. The squad is even weaker than last season, so against a more ambitious Hung Yen, coach Le Quang Trai's men fell quickly. Pleiku is under renovation, forcing the team to play temporarily in Quy Nhon, losing the familiar roar of home fans. Without that noise, a young and fragile side like Hoang Anh Gia Lai becomes more exposed. I have always believed an empty stadium is a mirror: it does not reflect the crowd, it reflects the loneliness of the game. Watching Hoang Anh Gia Lai play in Quy Nhon, one sees this clearly, a team with no spiritual anchor, only the grass as a foundation. The two remaining clubs, Hai Phong and Hong Linh Ha Tinh, though their V-League starts were not disastrous (one loss, one win), saw their National Cup exits as little surprise, since they conserve energy for the survival race. Hai Phong conceded in the first half and hardly showed the will to turn it around. Hong Linh Ha Tinh held a 0-0 for 90 minutes then collapsed in the shootout, an outcome anyone who has taken a penalty knows: when the desire between two sides is uneven, the shootout does not only measure nerve, it measures how much each side wants to live. Looking back at data from recent seasons, I notice a pattern that has repeated for years yet few care to name. Whenever the National Cup kicks off right at the start of the V-League, when clubs have just endured a tiring transfer window and are reshuffling their lineups, the rate of lower-division upsets spikes. That does not mean first-division football grew strong overnight; it means the timing of the match matters more than the rank on paper. A V-League side forced to play its third match in seven days with a thin squad is entirely different from a first-division team that has just rested and is coming off a disappointing opener it needs to atone for. Here, I want to step away from the current of opinion calling this a V-League "disaster". Read closely, and what we are witnessing is not the collapse of the V-League but the narrowing of the gap between the V-League and the first division, in a way nobody wanted. The money-poor clubs of the V-League are edging toward the level of the strong first-division group. The National Cup does not create surprises; it merely exposes a reality long in place. A team is not merely eleven people; it is a system of equations that runs, and any equation missing the budget variable shows the result in the scoreline. The counter-intuitive angle lies here: we tend to think first-division teams beat V-League clubs through spirit. But spirit is only the tip. Beneath the surface, a first-division club like Becamex Ho Chi Minh City or Hung Yen now owns a squad not at all inferior, sometimes even superior in fitness and stability, to struggling V-League sides. When Becamex, though just relegated, remains a promotion candidate, they bring into the National Cup the lineup of a scaled-down V-League team. When Thep Can Tho or Phu Tho play with determination, they represent a class of clubs maturing faster than the V-League notices. So calling this a "shock" is a way of comforting oneself. The real shock is realizing that half the V-League is living on the memory of its own status. For Hoang Anh Gia Lai, an early National Cup exit may actually be good. The mountain club frees up a battlefield and pours its small resources into the V-League, where nearly every season it must confront survival. One fewer front is one fewer place to bleed. For Thanh Hoa, the story is more complex: they have few choices, because even if they want to focus, the club remains surrounded by worries off the pitch. Eight qualifying matches, four defeats, three at home. That number tells no story of a weak league; it tells of a league split into two classes, and the lower class is no longer resigned. If organizers and football people look straight at it, they will see the National Cup operating like a metal detector: it only beeps when something truly unusual is there, and this week it beeped for two whole days. What is worth pondering is not which team was eliminated, but whether we dare to admit that the boundary between the two divisions has grown thin. A mature football scene is not measured by strong teams always beating weak ones, but by every match carrying meaning for both sides. Until the National Cup is no longer a burden to be dropped, the makeshift giants of the V-League will keep falling, and each time they fall, they will call it a surprise, to avoid calling it by its true name.